CSR Speak - Barclays

Reading between the lines of the PR machine...Barclays plc, one of the UK's largest consumer banks.

"Our own commitment to the Equator Principles (a voluntary set of social and environmental guidelines for managing project finance) stems from a combination of ethical and commercial motivations: minimising a project's social and environmental impact is unquestionably the right thing to do, but it also makes good commercial sense."

From the Barclays plc Corporate Responsibility Report 2005.

The campaigners say:

Barclays has led the finance of the controversial Trans Thai-Malaysia pipeline with a loan of $257.1 million. According to a 2005 Corporate Responsibility coalition (CORE) report, the pipeline passes through important areas of wetland forest and some of the few remaining stretches of rare sand dune forest along the coast of Southern Thailand. Two years of peaceful and lawful protest in Southern Thailand have been met with threats of police violence, harassment and intimidation from security patrols. The UN Special Envoy on Human Rights described the situation as a "climate of fear."

This short piece appears in the January/February 2007 issue of the Ethical Consumer magazine.

Reading between the lines of the PR machine...Ford Motor Co.